Spent the greater part of yesterday removing redundant blog entries from this blog. Bloody hell, what a waste of time.

It was frankly embarrassing re-reading all that shit. All that fury, that indignation I had for him. It was just so embittered and…not very well written. Beware the curse of resentment!

From 11am-3pm I sat with a journalist discussing my ongoing legal story. They are sending a photographer. It’s a cover story. The last time I had this much interest from the press I was making movies. Now I am doing something for the greater good, I have been handed an oppertunity to help others and I am grasping hold of it. Nothing will unseat me from doing the right thing.

I left something of myself in the jail. I left that Duncan who deserved no respect.

Do you understand that darling? Do you remember when I was serious, contained? You found it so attractive?

Everything from my old life, pre jail has become irrelevant. The artifice, the indulgence, the decadence…it was a worthless occupation. Chasing infamy? Even the places I used to visit daily are of no interest to me. The people I know there, the people I knew…caught up in their own peculiar madness, their preoccupation with power and prestige.

I remind myself to be truthful, to be kind.

The people I have been meeting since leaving the jail, the activists, the lawyers, the human rights advocates…I am humbled by their brilliance, their focus, their dedication.

Lastly, as I was sitting with the fiercely intelligent man who interviewed me yesterday I remembered something about the jail that impressed me. Something peculiar to the gay dorm, peculiar to that community of trans and gay men.

On the streets, elder trans women ‘adopt’ younger trans girls as their daughter. These relationships were strengthened in the dorm, references to ‘my mother’ or ‘my father’ baffled me. At first.

Family connections emerged, not bound by blood but by commitment. Young gay men needing advice, support, succor and council turning to those they respected. Adopting one another as mother and daughter. Father and son. Letting those about them know that familial ties now existed, that they were to be honored.

My son is fighting. My daughter wants a dress. My mother has had bad news. My father’s husband is being released.

As we ate together at night. These ‘families’ helped each other practically: feeding each other, sharing the loaves and the fishes. Sharing the support, the love, the strength, the gossip. That which may not have existed from real parents, from blood brothers, from those who we take for granted…from whom we were born.

Many young black men from Compton, Watts and Inglewood had spent their formative years co-opted into gangs. The Bluds and the Crips.

Their coping skills would horrify you, you my dear readers…but kept them alive. Murder, guns, retaliation, fighting to the death were common for most of the young black men I met. Frequent.

On top of all that, against that barbaric backdrop they had to deal with coming out.